If it makes you feel any better, my accountant charged me $1800 to prepare the paperwork that says my corporation owes the $800 to California for alternative minimum tax. Because my corporation did precious little work last year and is mostly amortizing purchases from 2014 still. Companies such as Quicken and H&R Block exist because of the "do you feel lucky, punk?" duality of Americans and our taxation system. On the one hand, we know the game is rigged and if you play deduction bingo correctly you can save a bajillion dollars. On the other hand, we know that if you play deduction bingo incorrectly you get to sit through an audit. Meanwhile, H&R and Intuit know that if you've got a job and not much else you can totally file a 1040EZ but only 13% do so in pursuit of those hidden riches from itemized deductions... and also know that your odds of being audited if you make less than a million dollars a year are on the order of half of one percent.
I had the good fortune to be indoctrinated with a deep fear of the feds, and essentially was encultured to believe that they WILL be auditing me. I WILL have to account for every dollar I've earned and spent, since I was bagging groceries in high school.your odds of being audited if you make less than a million dollars a year are on the order of half of one percent.
I saw this yesterday at Reddit and was annoyed when I read it. The government could be sending pre-filled forms where they have to show their hand instead of making taxpayers guess what was sent in. That would eliminate the guesswork of collecting paperwork to substantiate an item that they already know about and you're fine with. The tax preparation companies can't even come up with a good reason that it would be bad for the taxpayer. To add more insult, 70% of taxpayers are eligible to prepare their taxes for free under an existing government program, but only 2% have used it. Most don't know about it or don't want to take the chance of getting it wrong. If the government sent pre-filled tax forms, that wouldn't even be an issue.
It's more than just those two examples. Good luck finding an online tax prep solution that's not contributing to this problem. https://sunlightfoundation.com/2013/04/15/tax-preparers-lobby-heavily-against-simple-filing/